I once tested a new product entry by a major toy company into the category of boy’s toys.  The product was specially designed for young boys (3-7 years old) who are at the developmental stage of “autonomy”. That means that after the early co-dependency stage (0-2 years) they are feeling their “independence oats” which is directly tied to the need for autonomy and power.  The “magic” of this concept was that in both the verbal and the visual communication, the product focused specifically on the need for autonomy and power. This translated into a very compelling emotional promise on a number of concrete and abstract levels that include entertainment value, need satisfaction, attention, competency, relationships and a variety of play patterns.   

As far back as Abraham Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, psychologists have conducted research data on the fundamental “drivers” that motivate and move individuals to action.  Maslow’s hierarchy started with basic biological survival needs such as food, water and sex and followed with the next level, the need for safety.  The hierarchy of needs progressed into higher levels such as love, self esteem and self actualization.  This hierarchy of needs is age and stage related and also assumes that the needs on the lower end of the hierarchy are at least partially satisfied before an individual can truly meet the higher needs on the ladder such as self actualization. Other theories and research have continued to emerge from the research on needs and motivation that point to a broad range of fundamental “drivers” that push and motivate our behavior as consumers, mostly on an automatic or unconscious level.

PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOLBOX

1. Pick one of your favorite products and ask yourself, what is the emotional promise of this product?  What need does it satisfy for me?
2. While you’re watching TV or other forms of media advertising, focus on the emotional promise of the ad.  What emotions is the advertiser trying to tap into?  Why?
3. In the development of enriching products and programs, why is it critical to understand the emotional promise?
4. What have you noticed about how the emotional promise of a product or program is related to the age and the stage of  the consumer?   How is it significantly different for children than adults?

Your Product Success I.Q. combines three critical success dimensions especially relevant now, in our ever changing contemporary culture.  These  3 Cs of product success are Character, Competence and Communication.

In this post, I’ll explain each one of these briefly and show you how they provide a working framework for product success in future posts.

Character is a distinctive set of qualities or characteristics that make up, distinguish and define an individual and his business. From my perspective it includes two sub-components.  The first is a Sense of  SELF, that  is not only the ego driven separate sense of self,  but  much more expansive to invite and embrace creativity, individual differences, integrity, passion, purpose, productivity and consciousness.  The second component of Character is  a person’s accompanying set of values that directly align with this larger Sense of SELF.

Competence refers to the individual and business qualities, abilities and skills, and their levels of knowledge. The three sub-components of Competence are Mastery, Meaning and Self Management.

Communication, is the process of exchanging information. For the Product Success System, Communication occurs in three separate domains-communication with oneself  (ME Communication), communication with other individuals or groups (WE Communication), and finally communication with inanimate non-human objects (IT Communication such as computers, environment, technology).

Today, in our frenetic technological environment, it is absolutely critical to understand the 3 Cs as a fundamental set of building blocks for product success.  As this series of posts unfolds, the application of the Product Success I.Q. to both the PERSON and the PRODUCT dimensions of product success will be discussed in further detail with examples and activities.

Here’s why the ESSENCE of your product is important.

1. The ESSENCE or core of your product contains, somewhere inside it the value proposition for the consumer. If you can’t reduce the ESSENCE to five words or less, you are unclear about where the product benefit lies and you’ll probably have a difficult time communicating it to your consumers.
2. When you work on reducing your product concept down to it’s ESSENCE, you can discover where to go next to determine your unique selling proposition or point of difference from the competition. For example, if I think the ESSENCE of my new fitness product is as broad as fitness, I’ll lose.  In today’s competitive attention scattered marketplace, I need to take the next step and determine something special about the type of fitness product that I’m offering, and that something special better be “special”.  That next step begins to “flush out” the product point of difference and value proposition more thoroughly. For example, the ESSENCE might be portable fitness or entertaining fitness.  The best case scenario is when your product ESSENCE is five words or less, crisp, unique, concise and compelling.
3. In working with companies, groups and individuals on product ideas, I’ve found that if I toss out the question of product ESSENCE, I often get a very different answer from members of the same team that are working on the project.  This is a problem, this means that different team members are probably on a different ”page” about the product benefits or the value proposition.  This is especially prevalent in the early stages of product development. It then becomes important  to create a deeper dialog among team members about the ESSENCE of the product.  Once some level of agreement has been reached, the door to creative ideas around the ESSENCE has been opened wider and the possibilities for “drilling deeper” are greater.

PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOLBOX: Product Essence

Spend some time discovering the ESSENCE of products that are in your office or that you see on television commercials. See how quick you can get to the “bottom line” , heart, or core of a product. Move through the most general ESSENCE to the more specific ESSENCE. Pick a couple of products that you have done this with and ask some of your associates or friends how they view the ESSENCE of the product. You’ll be surprised at what you discover.

The product idea was inspired by a negative traumatic incident that happened to Gina late in the 1990’s. The product line that emerged from that event may have played a major role in her healing. Gina’s basic message was that people need happiness in their lives and she was going to be a “messenger” for the good and the positive. The question the panel asked was how much money has the product made thus far? When Gina answered with a nominal amount, the “sharks” unanimously agreed that there was no potential for a business here, despite the fact that everyone loved her idea. One of the members of the Shark Tank group commented that “money has no soul” and followed that comment by “I’m out.”

Gina’s tearful product development story was one of healing from a devastating experience in the past. The product line represented the vehicle for healing and provided a deep level of meaning and purpose that most probably served as a path and a purpose in Gina’s life with her long term commitment to doing something positive.

Why had the product failed in the marketplace thus far?  There are a multitude of potential reasons, none of which were explored by the quick to judge panel. Their decisions were based purely on a Product as Profit paradigm of business.

Gina’s story is a clear example of Product As Purpose, where meaning, passion, purpose and a strong commitment to something higher than only money is driving the product development.

I hope that this product line and the courageous entrepreneur that is committed to making a difference in society finds the key to unlocking the success of her product and reaping the profit that will align with her passion and purpose.

PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOLBOX: Product As Purpose

1. Beyond Product as Profit and Product as Path, is your product or program idea directly related to your purpose in life?
2. What do you notice about this Product As Purpose type of product success that makes it really “special”?
3. Can you give examples of successful products and programs that came from the paradigm of Product as Purpose?
4. Do you recognize a different type of motivation and commitment to product success if a deeper purpose is part of the underlying foundation?

Personally, I spent a large part of my career resisting sales and marketing.  I placed that part of product development into a special box and labeled myself with another set of skills that excluded the ones that I didn’t want to work on. The result, my path was more narrow and took longer than it should have with more time spent avoiding the important pieces than overcoming my learned limitations.

It’s pretty easy to separate the dimensions of product development into neat categories that you like and dislike. For example, if you lean toward the creative side, you may only want to concentrate on the “juicy” acts of creativity and inventiveness, leaving the “nuts and bolts” of research, marketing, sales, and distribution to others, or in many cases even overlook some of these “hard” critical elements, placing your entire product development  in jeopardy.

Product as path is a success attitude and a positive point of view. The objective is to use the product development process as the personal development process.  It’s a way to learn the “big picture” of product success and to sharpen a wide variety of personal development skills, all of which will be vital to your future in the world of business.   It is a positive mind set designed to tackle all areas of product success as a pathway to personal development. The “big picture” for product success is going to contain a broad range of challenges, some that come easy and some that demand a strong new commitment and endless hours of time before you will be able to understand and master the critical pieces of the product puzzle. Product as path raises the bar for product success adding an important element to the product as profit model that concentrates on product development from the inside out.

PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOLBOX: Product As Path

1. What areas of your product development do you resist?
2. What do you tell yourself about those particular areas?
3. Do you consider your product development a “path” of learning?
4. What are you willing to do differently?

NEXT:  What is a successful product?    Product as Purpose

There are a number of ways that we can think about what makes a successful product. Let’s take a look at the first one-product as profit.

This definition is simple. It’s all about the profit potential and what it will take before the money starts rolling in. Product as profit is essential but incomplete. If this is the only motivation for developing a product, there will eventually be personal success tradeoffs that an individual will have to make. In the journey of product success, maintaining motivation and commitment depends upon a lot more than money. When a person is starting down the product success pathway, everything can be exciting in the short term, but unless other underlying psychological pieces of the puzzle are integrated (like autonomy, meaning, passion, positive relationships, love of learning, competency skills, maintaining some sense of balance) it’s just a matter of time until a singular product as profit approach will take its toll.

PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOLBOX: Product As Profit

Here are a few PRODUCT SUCCESS questions to ask yourself.

1. If money was no object and I had as much of it as I needed, would I still be motivated to develop the particular product that I have chosen?
2. What specific tradeoffs am I willing to make (time, family, relationships, other opportunities, friends, relaxation, etc.) to move forward with the development of my product.
3. What are the most important psychological benefits that I gain from developing my product?

NEXT:  What is a successful product?  Product As Path

This blog is about two sides of product success,  the PRODUCT side and the PERSONAL side. The PRODUCT side represents the success of your product in the marketplace. The PERSONAL side includes the implications of developing a successful product for your time, freedom, relationships, family, stress, happiness, psychological well being and fulfillment in life.

Most of the posts to follow will be arranged to discuss any one or all of the following three sections:

PRODUCT SUCCESS

The “How To” of developing a successful product or program

PERSONAL SUCCESS

The “How To” of psychological well being and balance to accompany product success.

DR. BOB’S PRODUCT SUCCESS TOOL BOX

Tools and techniques for integrating both the PERSONAL and the PRODUCT side of success.

NEXT: What is a successful product or program?  Product as Profit